Community Church Sermons

The Fourth Sunday in Lent, Year C - March 25, 2001

"A New Creation: A Case Study”

2 Corinthians 5:16-21

Today I want to not preach a sermon as such, but rather to offer a personal testimony that has some bearing on what we are initiating today with the commissioning of our ChristCare group leaders. It is a testimony about the tremendous transforming power of God to fulfill the promise that, if anyone is in Christ, he or she is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come!

When I remember my father, who died at age 50 – now some 26 years ago – I hold in my mind a “before and after” image. It’s sort of like what you see on the Oprah show when she presents some personal care experts doing hairstyle, and fashion, and make-up makeovers for ordinary people in the audience. But it’s different in the sense that the before and after picture I hold of my dad is not one that describes a change to his physical self, but rather to his spiritual self. There is a very distinct before and after.

On the before side is a man who grew up in humble surroundings, a boy who had lots of athletic ability, but who was unable to really put it to use because of the need to work and bring in some money for the family. His father – my grandfather – was a good man whose innocence as a child had been rudely ripped away by being the one to discover the body of his own father who, under the press of life, had committed suicide. Perhaps that is what led to my grandfather’s later alcoholism, and other internal struggles with the demons of life. He worked for one of the railroads, and was away from home most of the time. Today, you might say he was emotionally unavailable to his family. So my father’s mother was the primary source of warmth and love and security for my dad and his two younger brothers. She did a great job with them. But life was pretty hard.

My dad served in the army in the South Pacific during World War II. He was on Guam and Okinawa, and several of the other island chains. Like many of you who have experienced the horror of war, he was never one to talk about his experiences, but kept them pretty much to himself. After returning to the states, my dad married a hot little redhead named Shirley Johnson – my mommy – and they built a good life together, and brought three kids into the world.

From the time we were very young, my dad took it upon himself to make sure we got to participate in the sports he had to give up when he was a boy. Some might say he overdid it, but I don’t think any of us kids objected. Endless hours of shooting basketballs. Throwing footballs. Batting practice. Learning to throw curveballs in the street in front of our house. My first attempt at a curveball led to the ball smashing through the windshield of his car. But he didn’t seem to mind too much because, after all, the ball had curved! He coached the teams we were on, and became very successful at it. He was fiercely competitive. He taught good fundamentals, and knew how to motivate players. He played to win, and his teams always won championships. But through it all, my dad struggled with a very volatile anger. He did not get along with umpires or referees most of whom loved to throw him out of games. And that happened with frequent regularity.

And it was my dad’s anger as well that kept us from going to church. I like to tell people that the reason I am not a Baptist today is because our family’s first foray to a church was to the First Baptist Church in Worcester, Massachusetts. My mom and my young brother Steve, who was an infant, went to the sanctuary to await my dad’s return from enrolling my sister and me in Sunday School. Things went okay for Karen, but something happened with me. Maybe they didn’t have enough crayons or something. Anyway, my dad got mad. And, in a huff, he took me by the scruff of the neck, dragged me out to the car, and off we sped. We ended up at the Worcester Airport, watching airplanes takeoff and land for an hour. When we drove back to First Baptist, to pick up the rest of the family, my mom was seething. We never did go back, so I never became a Baptist. But years later, I did learn to fly!

My dad was an intense man. He was an accountant by trade, and took his work very seriously. He was early to arrive at work in the morning, and late to go home at night. He got into the very early days of data processing, and was his company’s resident expert. He rose through the corporate ranks to become comptroller of one of the world’s largest printing companies.

When I think of my dad’s before picture, my eyes are met with the sight of a good man who tried hard, and worked hard, and was devoted to his family. He had a lot of good qualities, and he had his flaws too – his volatile anger, his need to win, his satisfaction with a life apart from any real relationship with God. In many respects, my dad was like any other guy. And he loved the life he lived. That’s the picture I have of my dad before. And it’s an image I treasure.

But I value the after picture even more!

There came a day when my dad’s heart was opened by the grace of God to the love of Jesus Christ. My mother noticed it right away. To her, there was a new radiance about him.

But most noticeable of all was the way his life began to be transformed, almost as if some unseen potter was re-shaping the clay of his life. He did not run off to become a missionary, and I’m sure they never would have accepted him if he tried. But the very character of his life as a corporate man began to deepen. Employees were no longer just employees, but real human beings. He began to care about them, and their struggles. One woman even today tells of sharing with my dad her anxiety about facing cancer surgery. She says my dad told her that he and his wife would be praying for her. Her heart melted, she says, knowing that anyone cared enough about her to pray. And oddly enough, when she was on the operating table a few days later, she experienced some powerful encounter with God. It changed her life forever. And to this day, she believes that my father’s prayer was the instrument for that gift of grace.

At work, my dad’s relationships with people took on new depth and new meaning. But on the playing field, something even more amazing began to occur. No, my dad was not cured of either his anger or his natural inclination to despise referees and umpires. He still got caught up in the moment of a game, and still said things that got him in trouble. But it seemed to be happening less frequently. And when it did happen, another incredible thing began to occur. He’d go home and start feeling badly about it. I’ll never forget the day my dad took out a phone book and looked up the number of a basketball referee who’d tossed him out of a game the day before. He dialed the phone. “Charlie, this is Martin Singley,” he said, “no, please don’t hang up…I just wanted to call and apologize for my behavior yesterday…”

He was still the same man. But he was different. His need to win became interrupted by things like a boy who’d tragically lost his right foot trying to hop onto a freight train. Months of rehabilitation later, David’s need to stand on the pitcher’s mound again, and with an artificial limb try to throw again, recovering a sense of his own lost self-worth, became more important even than my dad’s need to win another championship. And so they lost the title that day because my dad gave David his chance to pitch. And I know it must have killed my dad to lose that game. But in my dad’s losing, David won a future.

He was still the same man, but, in so many ways – at work, at home, on the field of life - my dad’s life was being deepened, and broadened, and transformed.

This is why I agree with St. Paul when he says that we should never again regard anyone from a human point of view. There is another way to look at human beings. God’s way. And God’s view perceives that ordinary people like you and me can be transformed into much more than we are right now. And as a result, we can become sources of new life to people all around us, and make the world a better place.

“If anyone is in Christ, he or she is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come!”

The promise of Jesus is transformed lives in people like my dad. People like you and me. Not only do I believe this promise, but I’ve seen and experienced it time after time in life. And there seem to be some key ingredients in the process.

The New Testament is very clear on this score. The transforming power of Jesus Christ is most powerfully released in our lives when we become part of a community of faith that has several important characteristics:

First, it is a community that deliberately practices Christ’s love, where people know each other and are known, and where people are accepted for who and what they are, with no strings attached.

Second, it is a community where people can talk and share openly and honestly about life and faith, and in the process become close friends who bear each other’s burdens, and encourage each other, and support each other.

Third, it is a community that seeks to discover God’s will for everyday life, and that calls people to reach for things higher and greater than what they reach for now.

And fourth, it is a community that joins together in serving the needs of others in Jesus’ name.

These four elements brought together – and I’ve described them very simplistically – provide the setting within which the Holy Spirit can most effectively transform lives. This is what the New Testament shows us the Christian church is intended to be. This is how life was lived in Corinth, and Jerusalem, in Ephesus and Philippi. The early Christians formed communities of people who loved and accepted each other, who shared each other’s burdens, who sought to know and to live out God’s will in daily life, and who always reached out to others with Christ’s reconciling love. Of course, when churches grew in number and became too big to allow for this kind of intimacy and personal attention, smaller groups were formed within them so that everyone could be included in such a personal way.

On this Sunday, as we get ready to launch our new ChristCare ministry, I just want to give my own family’s personal testimony to the power of small groups in the life of the church. For it was through such a group that my dad found a new relationship with God that transformed his good life into a better life, into a life that made the world a better place in Jesus’ name.

In fact, small group ministry became so important to my parents that they even became involved with helping other churches get them started. And I had the joy – years later – to meet and hear about some of the people whose own lives were transformed in special ways by virtue of the small group ministries my parents helped begin. I had no idea his life had touched so many people! Many of those stories I heard at the time of my father’s funeral in 1974. You see, he and my mom had gone to help lead a small group conference at an Episcopal church in Manchester, Connecticut. My dad was asked to tell about how Christ had changed his life. So he went up front, and told his story. And then he returned to my mother’s side. She says he sort of looked up toward heaven and quietly said, “Isn’t God wonderful?” And, in that very instant, my dad went to heaven.

I believe in the power of small group ministry. As our ChristCare program gets set to start, I want to ask you to consider what the before and after pictures of your life might look like if you decide to become involved.

You will be blessed. Your family will be strengthened. You will make the world a better place.

And as a church together, may we join St. Paul in saying, “From now on, we regard no one from a human point of view…If anyone is in Christ, he or she is a new creation! The old passes away! Behold, the new will come!”